NOAA lead author of the U.S. Climate Change Science Plan Synthesis and Assessment Report on Texas drought: "This is not a climate change drought"

The good news, [Dr. Robert Hoerling, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist, who served as the lead author of the U.S. Climate Change Science Plan Synthesis and Assessment Report] says, is that this isn't global warming. "This is not the new normal in terms of drought. Texas knows drought. Texas has been toughened on the anvil of droughts that have come and gone. This is not a climate change drought. What we do anticipate from climate change is a situation where temperatures progressively increase."

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La Nina is known for its ability to create drought in the United States. But Hoerling found another powerful trend — the waters in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific were unusually hot, far warmer than the range of normal variation.

Previous studies have linked higher ocean temperatures to global warming. But Hoerling’s research, which appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, goes one step further. He found that the warm oceans, coupled with the effects of La Nina, worked together to trigger the droughts in Afghanistan and Southern Europe, as well as the United States.

Oh yeah, Texas has drought because the Indian Ocean is a fraction of a degree warmer! Hilarious! Wanna buy some ocean front property in Arizona? I guess it must be so, though, there was never a drought before we started producing CO2!